Cossack

Cossack, Russian Kazak, (from Turkic kazak, “adventurer” or “free man”), member of a people dwelling in the northern hinterlands of the Black and Caspian seas. They had a tradition of independence and finally received privileges from the Russian government in return for military services. Originally (in the 15th century) the term referred to semi-independent Tatar groups, which formed in the Dnieper region. The term was also applied (by the end of the 15th century) to peasants who had fled from serfdom in Poland, Lithuania, and Muscovy to the Dnieper and Don regions, where they established free self-governing military communities. In the 16th century there were six major Cossack hosts: the Don, the Greben (in Caucasia), the Yaik (on the middle Ural River), the Volga, the Dnieper, and the Zaporozhian (mainly west of the Dnieper).

Polish kings in the early 16th century began to organize the Zaporozhian Cossacks into military colonies to protect Poland’s borders. Throughout the 16th century and the first half of the 17th, those Cossacks retained their political autonomy, briefly forming a semi-independent state under Bohdan Khmelnytsky (c. 1649). Threatened by Polish domination, the Zaporozhian Cossacks signed a treaty with Russia in 1654, under which their autonomy was to be respected. The Russians likewise used the Cossacks first as defenders of the Russian frontier and later as advance guards for the territorial extension of the Russian Empire. Internally, the Cossacks regained a greater degree of their cherished liberties under the Russians than they had known under the Poles. The Russian throne reserved the right to approve Cossacks’ negotiations with the Poles and the Turks, the peoples with whom Russian relations were the most sensitive. Otherwise, the chief ruler, or hetman (ataman), of the Cossack army had a free hand in foreign policy. Thus, in exchange for some military obligations, the Cossacks had restored some of their autonomy—in the short term. Over the years, however, Russia increasingly came to dominate the Cossacks.

Under the Russian umbrella, the Cossacks expanded eastward from their home in the Don and were early colonizers of Siberia. Indeed, Cossack leader Yermak Timofeyevich became a Russian folk hero for his role in the conquest of that region. By the end of the 19th century, the number of Cossack groups had expanded to 11, including the Don, Kuban, Terek, Orenburg, and Ussuri Cossacks.

When their privileges were threatened, the Cossacks revolted, their most-famous rebel leaders of the 17th and 18th centuries being Stenka Razin, Kondraty Bulavin, and Yemelyan Pugachov. Hetman Ivan Mazepa contributed 5,000 Cossacks to the cause of Charles XII of Sweden during the Second Northern War. As a result, they gradually lost their autonomous status. By the late 18th century, all Cossack males were required to serve in the Russian army for 20 years, and, although each Cossack village (stanitsa) continued to elect its own assembly, the hetman was appointed by the central government. The Cossacks’ social structure, which had traditionally been based on equality and communal landholding, deteriorated, particularly after 1869, when Cossack officers and civil servants were allowed to own land privately and rent it to outsiders.

Pugachov, YemelyanYemelyan Pugachov, detail of a portrait by an unknown artist; in the State Historical Museum, Moscow.Courtesy of the State Historical Museum, Moscow

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Russians used Cossacks extensively in military actions and to suppress revolutionary activities. During the Russian Civil War (1918–20), the Cossacks were divided. Those in southern Russia formed the core of the White armies there, and about 30,000 fled Russia with the White armies. Under Soviet rule Cossack communities ceased to function as administrative units. In the 21st century, under Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin, Cossacks resumed their historical relationship with Moscow. Cossack auxiliariesbolstered local police forces within Russia, most notably at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games, but their use of harsh tactics and enforcement of a conservativemoral code sparked concerns among human rights organizations, Cossack paramilitary groups fought alongside Russian troops during the 2008 invasion of Georgia, and they participated in Russia’s armed annexation of the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea in 2014 as well as the subsequent Russian-backed insurgency in eastern Ukraine. According to the 2010 Russian census, some 68,000 people identified themselves as ethnic Cossacks.